Dateline NYC

Well, technically I am in Boston as I post this, but having arrived last night, NYC is now home base for Rita and I for the next week. I just decided that I would spend Tuesday on a one day jaunt to Boston to sneak a little work in (because there’s nothing like an immediate departure to Boston to say “thanks for flying across the country with me, Rita”. – I’m a real catch, I tell ya.). So really, I just look at Monday “night” like a 6 hour layover in NYC until I make my connection to Boston.

AFTER today, though – watch out – the McConvilles take Manhattan when Mom joins us in NYC tomorrow (and you think NYC has vices NOW…just wait til my mother & I spend a week here). I had intended to make this an inexpensive Thanksgiving trip:

Flight….miles
Hotel….points (can you use points to pay for the smoker’s cleaning penalty?)
Taxi’s….Ummmm – 401(k) loan?

After the ride from Islip (apparently in Canada), I’ve decided to just buy a car for the remainder of the trip (why not have a car in one more city?). Apparently, someone forgot to tell the cabbies that there is a recession going on (oh wait…is that Richard Fuld from Lehman Bros driving my cab? I think HE knows about the recession).

Rita LOVES IT when I plan these trips on the cheap. (I don’t actually get better bargains than Rita – I just get a lot less for my money). And the hotel looked a little….ummm FREE. I told Rita not to worry, that ALL the hotels in NYC had 100% graffiti exteriors, but my reassurances have lost all credibility since the Las Vegas trip to Excalibur (apparently not EVER hotel on the strip is plush). Actually, despite its address on Graffiti Alley (can someone warn mom?), the hotel is not that bad.

But it is a little tiny. There isn’t so much a pathway from the bathroom to the wardrobe as there is a pinball chute. Getting both people and suitcases into the room proved challenging…Suitcase A is first, followed by Person A, then Suitcase B, Person B. Oh wait, now Person A is blocked by Suitcase B and can’t get out. Ok, maybe Suitcase A, then Suitcase B, then Person A, Person B? Now Person B can’t reach her suitcase to unpack. The whole scenario would have just been HILARIOUS if it weren’t midnight and I wasn’t two hours into my six hour layover. I was in no mood for a test question from my Finite math class.

And that was just day one…

Invisible Fence, part deux

I never did finish my story about the electric fence…but I think I am finally able to talk about it again.

When we last left our intrepid pet owner…I had just gotten Molly a wireless invisible fence…which means I am too lazy to bury a wire in the front yard [bad decision]. So INSTEAD, I am trying to establish the boundary line by setting the knob on the transponder and then using the collar to "detect" the line… an exercise that is slightly akin to a 3-hr episode of “Punk’d”.

First of all, let me just describe to you the “red-collar-of-death” that is the linch-pin of this set-up. You could jump start a Buick with the diodes on this thing. And it is roughly a third of Molly’s body weight. Oh yeah - she won't suspect a thing when I strap this contraption on to her.

So let’s just paint the picture…here I am…walking this collar out all over the front yard, waiting for the collar to beep so I could race back in the house, adjust the dial and try it again. First of all, I looked like I was walking my “invisible” dog for three hours. Second, I looked like I was walking my invisible dog for three hours while jumping randomly and screaming “don’t tase me, bro”.

Then when you have the line where you want it, you are supposed to plant these little white flags to mark the “you’re-about-to-get-the-shit-shocked-out-of-you” line (because Molly is soooo good at recognizing boundaries that I am SURE a toy flag will keep her in the yard when oncoming traffic won’t). So now Rita’s otherwise beautifully landscaped yard is littered with what looks like kids’ toy flags that they forgot to put away. (I am going to put GI Joe on either side of one and make my own Iwo Jima memorial).

As part of the process, you are supposed to “orientate your dog to the flags”, so they know where the line is. If I could keep Molly from running off to attack the 92 year neighbor, this “orientation” would go a lot better. Seriously, while I am playing my little game of capture the flag…Molly has run all the way to Starbucks, attacking three schitzu’s and a terrier along the way.

So for those keeping score at home…the electroshock tally is as follows:
Maeve – multiple 2nd degree burns
Molly – “WHAT shock collar?”

Molly is still chasing the neighbors…but I’m afraid to leave the yard.

Climate Control

I like to say that it is 75 degrees and sunny every day in San Diego. But really, 75 degrees is just the median temperature. The outer region of that bell curve kicks off at 58 degrees with my morning latte and closes out at 93 degrees with my afternoon latte. (I don’t remember anything about “Santa Ana’s” in the San Diego promotional materials.) And ummm…WHERE is the thermostat again?? Oh, that’s right. You don’t NEED central heat and air in San Diego. (Need being a relative term.)

Which makes for an interesting climate in my office. I spend the entire first part of the day hovered over a clandestine space heater trying to thaw out my typing muscles (it’s hard to email with those mitten warmers in your palm). Then about 2 p.m., the sun peeks over the roof of the house and the temperature in my office skyrockets about 23 degrees. Honest to god…the 2 p.m. transition is like a Discovery Channel show with quick-speed global warming…ice cubes are melting, the dog is sweating. I’m pretty sure the last polar bear just went belly up during my afternoon conference call.

Trying to keep a steady-state temp in my office requires a whole intricate minuet – raise the shades at exactly 9 a.m., windows open 10:30, all closed at 1:45…. I am actually working on an excel spreadsheet to track the appropriate cutover time from the space heater to the oscillating fan. Mis-time one maneuver and you spend the afternoon working in the fourth ring of dante’s inferno.

I actually felt bad about operating the space heater/fan combo around my roommate Al Gore when she told me the September electric bill was “the highest it had ever been”. Well….until CONTEXT hit me in the face. Ninety eight dollars is the highest electric bill you’ve ever had?!? Where do you live…the 1950s? That’s one day’s electric bill in Evansville IN (inheritance schmeritance).

Gotta run…have to go stoke the bunson burner

That Cleaning Lady

It’s a Tuesday in San Diego…which means my nemesis is going to be here today. That’s right, the neatness nazi. As previously noted in this blog…Rita's tiny little cleaning lady is five feet of pure admonishment. And she hates me. I used to think that it was just because she liked to clean when no one else was here…but I think it’s a tad more personal than that. I have concluded that either a) her job is exponentially harder now that the living embodiment of the Pig Pen cartoon character has moved in b) she is secretly in love with the just-as-clean-as-she-is Rita [I mean…Rita & she have this “cleaning-the-baseboards” bond that I will just never understand] c) she objects to being called “Rosario” and “neatness nazi” or d) all of the above.

I am actually starting to dread Tuesday’s at home. I am on the losing end of an intricate power struggle [what part of “please don’t vacuum while I’m on a conference call” does she not understand?] And then this week I return home and my ceramic dragon totchke is broken…accident or ~warning~??? That’s just $%#^@ great. My little bric-a-brac moves across the country unscathed, but can’t survive Rosario’s first cleaning? Suspicious. And it’s not like I have a house-full of knick-knackery that she has to be careful of.

But she LOVES my dog. So much so that she is going to dog-sit for us while I take my mother to NYC for Thanksgiving (as only a favorite child would). I’m thinking the dog-sitting may be my ticket out of cleaning-lady purgatory. Either that or the ceramic dragon was only the first step…

Well, gotta run…I have time for one more Starbuck’s before I can go home.

Yes Virginia….

…there IS a Santa Clause. And her name is Maeve. At least there is a Santa Clause if you are the otherwise unfortunate soul who has to clean up after me at either a hotel room or the seat back pocket on an airplane. Because THAT is where I make my fairly regular gift offerings of iPods, half-read books, cash, jewelry and oddly enough...all those giftees I pick up for my dog sitter. In fact, I once left two power cords in a single hotel room. Now that takes effort.

I do not think they INTENDED iPods to be disposable, but I just lost my third one on my way back from….ummm, actually I have no earthly idea where I lost it. I had it when I got to Boston, but not when I left Philly. There was another city in there too, I think [we may have determined the root of the issue here]. And let’s be honest, given who we’re talking about – if it weren’t something I valued, the lost-iPod situation could be much worse (see: prescription drug losses).

Seriously, I have made the day of many an airline waitress or hotel cleaning lady through my stupidity generosity. Should I worry if I am listed as a “benefactor” to the Service Employees International Union? And people think I tip big (a buck fifty is big, right?) at hotels to compensate for the mess I leave behind me…au contraire – I consider it a down payment so that Hazel will turn my Southwest credit card into lost and found (where it can be more properly stolen by the desk clerk).

Oddly enough, I have never once lost my to-do list.

Barack the Vote!!!!!!

Sorry for the hiatus…I’m just now recovering from 168 straight hours of election coverage. I kept meaning to turn Election ‘08 coverage off, but then Wolf would just draw me back in with exit polling data of the advanced degreed car salesmen in Vigo County and I’d be hooked all over again. I have a couple of observations from election night coverage:

I think I have a Barangover. It doesn’t involve alcohol at all…just an overindulgence of hope.

What exactly do you have to do to lose an election in Alaska? A convicted felon awaiting sentencing is going to the U.S. Senate from Alaska?!? I guess being a “reformer” in Alaska just means you stick to misdemeanors. [Remember back when John McCain explained that Sarah Palin had been “vetted by the people of Alaska”??! Just sayin’] I think we know what the impending expulsion of Ted Stevens means in the context of gubernatorial replacement appointments…Hellooooooo Senator Levi Johnston (Senator Baby Daddy?)

The first state called on election night was a tad anti-climatic…Vermont? That wasn’t even worth the drum roll. “The Vermont polls have been closed for 11 seconds and we are now ready to call that state for Obama.” (I guess it does not take very long to count the one hundred and eleven votes in the state of Vermont – should they really get TWO whole senators?).

In his segue to Senate election coverage, Anderson Cooper just said “let’s go to Kentucky” – probably the very last time you are ever going to hear a gay man utter those words.

The polls are going to close in Tennessee in a little less than 11 hours…so we can now call the state for John McCain. Seriously…Tennessee did not get the memo re: Barack the Vote?!?? Virginia (!) - the seat of the confederacy - voted for Barack Obama and Tennessee went overwhelmingly McCain??? Al Gore – why do you even bother with a home state? Gore’s coattails must extend all the way to city council.

Now that the election is over - I don't think I need my internet any more. I should have LOADS of time to blog from now on!

Yes We Can

How about those election results! Thank goodness that's over with...now I can devote more time to my blogging.

GOBAMA!